Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
Bathing in Blood
9. Hear Who Say?
"...You know (if we've heard
The truth, and been told honestly) that your country
Is cursed with some strange, vicious creature
That hunts only at night and that no one
Has seen. It's said, watchman, that he has slaughtered...
...brought terror to the darkness..."
-Beowulf
Kakashi watched the three figures advance up the long catacomb of a hallway. Fluorescent lights flickered like candles in the wind from the cracked panels of the ceiling. Water stains the size of continents bloomed from the fissures a few feet above his head. The air pulsed with a living, low-profile electric hum that was not unfamiliar (though he just couldn't place where he'd heard it before), so quiet and yet so loud that it burned his ears. Ramming again and again against his world-weary nerves like a bird against a glass window.
At least there was light.
His students were oddly silent, walking in a ghastly straight line, hands by their sides. Not a sound. Not the slightest sound. Even Naruto had acquired a grim, funeral-march façade.
"You're pushing them too hard...making them grow up before their time..." Iruka's warnings and admonishments flooded back to him in a relentless rush, an unstoppable deluge that would somehow be stopped. Perhaps the teacher had been right. Perhaps he was breaking them.
Perhaps he should stop this nonsense of thinking, and get his mind back on the speech he needed to make.
The sound of unsynchronized footsteps, like the scuffling of rats, drew closer, and Kakashi fantasized for a moment about those parts in old horror movies, when you hear the feet of the unknown all too clearly and you know you can't run. But it was only a thought, right? Because what was there to be scared of in green eyes and cherry-blossom hair?
Even so, he took a subtle step backwards, hands reaching to feel the cold iron handles of the doors behind him. The doors to Room 301. The doors that would make all the difference; had made all the difference for generations upon generations of ninja hopefuls. He could feel the decades of tension that radiated from the metal; the anxiety and the excitement and the pent-up emotion vibrating through his skin.
Or maybe it was just his imagination.
Boot-clad feet stopped in front of him. The silver-haired teacher glanced hurriedly away from searching jade orbs.
Nothing to worry about...
"Sakura!" he exclaimed instead with not-quite-mock surprise, deciding to draw attention way from her and more towards her presence. "Glad you could make it."
Silence. The blonde-haired boy looked up with a quizzical glance, the only response he got for all that diplomacy.
Kakashi sighed in the depths of his mind. He'd planned his oration for a different Team Seven, one that no longer had a place in this world. This Team Seven was no longer predictable.
"...This way, you're all qualified to apply for the Chuunin Exams," he added belatedly. Begging someone, anyone to ask him why.
Naturally, Naruto was the one to oblige. The other two seemed lost in their own realms, barely listening or not listening at all.
"What do you mean by that, sensei?" The silver-haired teacher couldn't help but cringe at the way the boy's shrill, questioning voice butchered the static-filled air.
Great, just great, Kakashi. Only one student living, and you want them to take the Chuunins.
"You see, the test was set up so it can only be taken by three-person cells," Kakashi explained, with an expression of sage-like patience and wisdom. "I just didn't want you pressuring each other to apply," he added hurriedly before he could think. He knew how irrelevant the words were as soon as they left his mouth. His students barely talked to each other. Why was he ever worried about 'pressure'?
"Anyways, I have to say that I'm very proud of you, so get in there and do your best!" The optimistic words hung like concentrated corn-syrup between them, bleeding with saccharine sweetness. The raven-haired boy gave a vague blink of annoyance, felt the stickiness of the air and pulled away in disgust. The pink-haired girl looked through him at the door and twitched unnoticeably.
And only Naruto, God rest both his souls, pumped a fist in the air with an buoyant battle cry.
"Look out, everybody, 'cause here we come!"
